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Few NFL players enjoy chopping it up with the media more than Cameron Jordan. The New Orleans Saints defensive end appeared on “Good Morning Football” this week on NFL Network to preview the 2020 season and lay out his expectations, starting with a Week 1 kickoff against Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
“They’ve got the second-greatest quarterback of all-time, right behind Drew Brees, and now we’ve got a head-to-head two times a year,” Jordan said, via NFL.com. “We’ve got our work cut out for us and then they have an addition, you bring in Rob Gronkowski and LeSean McCoy, you already had two 1,000-yard receivers in (Chris) Godwin and Mike Evans.
“This is a team that’s fighting for second place.”
That’s bold talk, which isn’t new for Jordan (who famously shipped bottles from Jordan Winery to Cam Newton after his Saints swept Newton’s Carolina Panthers). But will the Saints defense show up in Week 1?
The black and gold have been notoriously slow starters in recent years. Despite winning 13 games in each of the last two season, they stumbled out of the gate in both season-openers: in 2019, the Saints averaged 333.1 total yards allowed per game (11th-best in the NFL), but opened the year by allowing Deshaun Watson and the Houston Texans to drop 414 yards of offense on their heads, scoring 28 points in a game that came down to a last-second Wil Lutz field goal for the win.
A year earlier, the Saints allowed 349.1 yards from scrimmage per game (ranking 14th league-wide) but were run off the field by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Ryan Fitzpatrick shredded them to the tune of 529 total yards, winning 48-40 in a game that was more lopsided than that score suggests. This kind of goes without saying, but just to be clear: Brady is a better quarterback than Fitzpatrick.
Sure, the Saints rebounded in both cases. But it’s an ugly pattern, and they can’t afford another start like what we’ve seen before. Jordan and the Saints must hit the ground running in 2020 if they’re going to win their third consecutive division title. With new uncertainty introduced from the COVID-19 pandemic and Brady surrounded by weapons young (Evans, Godwin) and old (Gronkowski, McCoy) there’s very little margin for error.
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